Love or hate gadgets some of them are very useful, hence the tidal wave of interest around applications (known as apps) for the iPhone on iTunes. A Steve Jobs presentation informs us that 4 billion of these handy useful, useless, fun, creative, time-wasting and otherwise beautiful apps have been downloaded from iTunes to date. No wonder everyone wants a bit of the action, that looks like a nice income stream if you can get it. As far as jet lag is concerned the gloves are off and the big players are wading in. Virgin Atlantic is the latest player looking to load your iPhone with that killer app to wash your jet lag troubles away. Jet-stress.com takes a quick look at the offerings.
Jet Lag Manager – this app is all about time, and trying to tell your body what time to pay attention to. It has a series of clocks faces with the local, bio clock and origin clock for you to keep track with. How this is supposed to change how you feel when jet lag grips you is beyond me. 😦 😦
Jet Lag – it’s hard to say anything good about this app. It is just a world clock. 😦 😦 😦 😦
Jet Lag Timer – No comment, all in German 😦
Jet Lag Rx – this app follows in the tradition of established scientific understanding about jet lag and offers some benefit if you have the patience to do the calculations and if your itinerary allows you to follow the guidance. I would suggest it for the less frequent flier as the more frequent type will grow tired of endless calculations. :- |
Easy Jet Lag – Sounds like it’s trying to tame a Tiger! Easy Jet Lag is for the more holistically minded of us, it provides a set of acupuncture points to press during your flight for jet lag relief. While I think preventative methods have a place in a long-term solution for jet lag this method on its own is not enough. 🙂
Atomic Blue Body Clock Light – this app takes a snippet of the latest findings around jet lag and tries to provide a useful tool. The centre that responds to daylight and controls the release of melatonin in the brain is responsive to blue light and is influence by it. This app provides a blue light accompanied by natural relaxing music. This app suffers from just concentrating on a single aspect of the problem, but good marks for trying. 🙂
Turbulence – Must have been written by a pilot with a sense of humour, place the iPhone on your pull down tray and watch the plane in the app respond when you go through real turbulence!! As a useful app :- ( Evil gratification in other peoples pain 🙂
Jet Lag Fighter from Virgin Atlantic – As an app and especially coming from an airline this is disappointing. The app concentrates on the work of a sleep specialist from the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, as sleep is not the defining or only result of jet lag this is a bit of a let down. That said it has an array of tools to use if you can be bothered to make the necessary entries before you leave home, (it won’t allow you to do it mid trip) or you will upset its calculations. The app is also chock full of advice and jet lag related information. :- ( :- ( :- (
Jet-stress.com’s overall opinion of this offering is that they are big on what they promise but disappointing in the delivery. All these apps take a superficial view of jet lag, based on the incorrect definition of it being all about body clock desynchronization and by extension sleep. There is a lot more to it than that, until the world wakes up to this fact we have a long way to wait for that all singing all dancing killer app.